Assuring Our Disclosures

Independent Assurance Statement to Johnson & Johnson

ERM Certification and Verification Services (ERM CVS) was engaged by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to provide limited assurance on the 2016 progress for the Health for Humanity 2020 Goals (2020 Goals) in the Johnson & Johnson 2016 Health for Humanity Report (the Report) as set out below.

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Our Conclusion

Based on our assurance activities as described below, nothing has come to our attention to indicate that the progress for 2016 against the 2020 Health for Humanity Goals and Targets as reported in the Scorecard on pages 21 to 25 of the Report is not fairly presented, in all material respects, in accordance with the reporting criteria.

Our Assurance Activities

We planned and performed our work to obtain all the information and explanations that we believe were necessary to provide a basis for our assurance conclusions. A multi-disciplinary team of sustainability and assurance specialists performed assurance procedures as follows:

A 3-day visit to J&J Corporate Offices in New Brunswick, NJ and a number of conference calls to interview:

relevant staff in order to understand and evaluate the systems and processes (including internal review/audit) used for collecting, evaluating and reporting the performance information and data for the Health for Humanity Goals and Targets and the other selected data;

management representatives responsible for the Health for Humanity Goals and Targets and the implementation of the related activities undertaken in 2016;

finance department staff responsible for the internal verification of the reported performance information for each of the Health for Humanity Goals and Targets;

A review of the definitions and internal guidelines for each of the selected Health for Humanity Goals & Targets;

A high level review of the greenhouse gas (GHG) and renewable energy data to confirm consistency with the findings of our separate GHG and renewable energy verification engagement including completeness and consistency over time and the restatements of the baseline and prior year data;

A review of samples of underlying documentary evidence and data to support the reported 2016 progress including internal and external documents; and

A review of the presentation of information relevant to the scope of our work in the Report to ensure consistency with our findings.

The Limitations of Our Engagement

The reliability of the assured information is subject to inherent uncertainties, given the available methods for determining, calculating or estimating the underlying information. It is important to understand our assurance conclusions in this context. In addition, the assured information should be read in conjunction with the boundary and consolidation policies under ‘About this Report’ on page 8 and the disclosures provided under the column ‘Notable’ in the Scorecard, in particular those relating to changes to the specific wording of some of the Targets and Metrics for the 2020 Goals since these were published in the 2015 Citizenship and Sustainability Report.

Our Observations

We have provided J&J with a separate management report with our detailed findings and recommendations. Without affecting the conclusions presented above, we have the following key observations:

The scope of this assurance engagement was revised in accordance with the adoption of the Health for Humanity 2020 Goals Progress Scorecard. The majority of the new goals have 2015 baselines, which were assured as part of the engagement last year, or have a baseline of zero.

This is the first year of reporting against new five-year Health for Humanity 2020 Goals and Targets. During the assurance process, the wording of some goals was revised to provide goal clarity and/or to ensure that progress against the goal could be reliably measured using metrics that that can be consistently collected and reported to stakeholders, as well as assured, over the full five-year period.

During 2016, J&J further developed its internal systems for reporting annual performance for the goals, for example by strengthening the document management and retention process. For the coming year we recommend that J&J focuses on improving the consistency of the internal quality assurance processes through an internal guidance document covering procedures and documentation of results and further training of the internal verifiers.

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Jennifer Iansen-RogersHead of Corporate Assurance

14 June 2017

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ERM Certification and Verification Services, London

www.ermcvs.com; email: post@ermcvs.com

ERM CVS is a member of the ERM Group. The work that ERM CVS conducts for clients is solely related to independent assurance activities and auditor training. Our processes are designed and implemented to ensure that the work we undertake with clients is free from bias and conflict of interest. ERM CVS and the ERM staff that have undertaken this engagement work have provided no consultancy related services to this client in any respect.

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